The Miles From Where You Are
by monoxide girl
Summary: She watches his back as he goes and knows he won't be back but she swears he will not ruin her. [Deidara x Kurotsuchi][one-shot][complete]


AN:  
idk why I wrote this.  
I don't really ship these two but I sort of do? I just love the sort of canon idea that they were all on a team together, and I was in the mood to write so I did this for my friend singingsin since I owed her fic anyway oops.  
Kinda non-canon because I haven't watched Naruto in ages and I'm really behind on the manga, my bad.  
Lyrics are from the song Youth by Daughter. Title is from Set Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol, lol.

The Miles from Where you are  
_monoxidegirl_

_Shadows settle on the place, that you left.  
Our minds are troubled by the emptiness.  
Destroy the middle, it's a waste of time.  
From the perfect start to the finish line._

The summer sun is relentless, beating hot down on the stone buildings and dusty streets of Iwagakure; Kurotsuchi weaves a path through the villagers, sixteen and tired. Deidara flanks her side, disheveled, his hair a mess, splattered with earth, the shining metal of his headband plate smeared with dried blood that is just starting to flake off. But his eyes are bright, like the sky, endless above them, and Kurotsuchi casts him a sidelong grin.  
She can sense the restless hum in his veins, like a vibration, see it in the thin line of his lips, feel it like a sharp stab in her guts, twisting tight and coiling up hot.  
Her grandfather can see it too, just like her – the hard lines of Deidara's shoulders are tense as they walk and her hand finds his, swathed in bandages.  
"Come out with me later, hey?" She asks, soft, her eyes pleading with him and he watches her, like he always does, like he has since they were just kids, academy genin, him tall and lanky and kind of gangly, trying to grow into the hard planes of his body and her, soft, young – just a girl, trying to keep up with a stubborn boy running ten paces ahead.  
"Fine."  
His shrug is noncommittal and Kurotsuchi hides her grin by biting on her lower lip – she can taste the dust and the familiar tang of sweat, salty. She squeezes his hand though and Deidara looks down to it then back to her eyes and there is something between them, like a thrum, a hum of energy – their sync as a team is unmistakeable, she knows him like a good book, each page dog-eared from her fingers, careful, his touch is gentle, like bird's feet as it brushes over her wrists.  
"I'll come get you, mmn." He says, and she nods, "Wait for me."  
"Of course."

Deidara kisses her that night, beneath the moonlight, just outside the village, tucked safely between jutting rock structures and the clear, endless ink of the sky and he tasted like sweat and dust, and he'd smiled at her and thumbed at her cheek.  
"A work of art, mmn."

Deidara passes his Jonin test two months later, at seventeen, and she wants to be proud of him but all she can feel is this heavy knot of dread settling in her gut as he slides his arms into his flak jacket.  
"It suits you," She says quietly as she smoothes her hands over the front of it. His eyes are focused somewhere else and there isn't any space between them but it feels like there is a whole country – he is gone, over the mountains, deep into the Wind country, and she is there, waiting, watching for him to come back; "Congratulations, Deidara."  
(She tries to ignore the way her grandfather watches the interaction, tries to ignore the way his sharp eyes search Deidara's and he knows and she squashes the panic in her gut when he approaches her later and touches her hand and murmurs 'watch him carefully'.)  
Deidara joins the bomber core when he is seventeen, a month and a half after becoming a jonin.  
Their little team is shattered into pieces and fractured – her and Akatsuchi kick around the village with nothing to do – they take solo missions and slip into other teams when they can and when they're needed, but their functionality is broken and cracked, like broken glass.  
It's raining one afternoon when she waits for him outside the bomber core HQ. The rain slides over the smoothed stone buildings in fat drops, turns the dark rock almost black, plasters her hair to her head and her clothes stick uncomfortably to her skin and she shivers and waits.  
When he finally comes out, she's been there for two hours and her fingers are numb from the cold. He walks her home and they don't talk, and the words hang on her lips but she can't make them fall. She wishes she could be more eloquent, less her and more him – he speaks his mind, or he used to. Now she looks at him and she sees all the things he won't say. It's hanging between them, over them, like well placed daggers, sharp points pressing to their spines.  
"Deidara," She starts, and he hmms at her to show he's heard her, but she knows him well enough to know that he's not listening. She stops and then he does, a beat later, just long enough to show that he's not there, not really, and her heart aches, it stumbles over its beats and the electricity that used to thrum between them is fading, dying – she's spitting sparks hoping for something but the other end is dead; "...Be careful, okay?"  
Something like confusion crawls over his face, flickers behind those endless sky eyes, rain rolling over his cheeks, making his hair a muddy brown, his eyelashes dark and thick and sticking together. His lips purse and he turns and walks away without her.

Kurotsuchi watches him walk away – figuratively, not literally, because Deidara slips off into the night and is never seen by them again.  
"He was always a sneaky little bastard," her grandfather rants, at her, to her, to Akatsuchi, to anyone in his office, "Always! A manipulative little shit – couldn't trust that one as far as you could throw him!"  
She is standing in front of his desk, her back rigid, board-straight, her eyes fixated on his desk, and she is willing down her tears, down the bile and the rising nausea and she did see it, see it in him, watched him. Deidara was gone long before today; she watched his retreating back and held onto his hand and tried, she tried, to pull him back, to bring him down to the village, to her, but it was never enough.  
Deidara always flew on bird's wings, floated off into the distance and vanished into the clouds, a speck in the sky, blue like his eyes.  
"Well," Ohnoki sinks into a chair, small behind his desk and her eyes snap to him, "He's...ah, Kurotsuchi. You know what must be done, don't you?"  
The lump in her throat stops her from speaking. Beside her, Akatsuchi inhales, a sharp, soft sound.  
"Tsuchikage, sir..."  
"Deidara is a missing ninja," He says, slow, deliberate, and the words wash over her like molasses, run down her spine and drip onto the floor, coat her so entirely she isn't sure she can breathe, "And we take care of our runaways."  
Kurotsuchi cries for him, because of him, in the darkness of her room – she can see her Father's shadow beyond her door, hovering, and she scrubs at her eyes with the back of her arm, smearing dust and her eyes flick to their team picture on her desk, by the window and a little clay flower Deidara molded for her.  
Kurotsuchi has been chasing him since they were children; him, dusty faced and her, the Tsuchikage's granddaughter, clean and spoiled rotten.  
He'd watched her practice her shuriken throws and he'd laughed when she'd missed the target every time. She had been furious at him for months because no one had ever laughed at her before, they'd always shown her the upmost respect. She was the Tsuchikage's granddaughter after all. But he was always a troublemaker, precocious and loudmouthed and disobedient. Deidara had always had his own way of doing things, always, and then they'd been slapped together as a team with Akatsuchi.  
The two of them, childish and excited, always – her, more practical, level-headed, steady. The rock, the bird and the boy; they'd excelled and her grandfather had been pleased to be their teacher, mentoring them, raising them up into a fine team of Chuunin.  
Kurotsuchi isn't sure when it all started to unravel. When Deidara's distant stares became more frequent, when he started to resent their missions, resent her grandfather, resent her. They were friends once, weren't they?  
Then and there, she tells herself she will not shed another tear for him.  
No more.

She hears little smatterings of things, little flecks of tidbits of information – nothing ever solid, nothing ever concrete, just whispers of things that may or may not be true. Deidara of Iwagakure stole a Kinjutsu and is now using it for himself. Deidara, formerly of Iwagakure, is a terrorist for hire, selling his services as a ninja for the highest bidder.  
Deidara is now in Akatsuki.  
Kurotsuchi doesn't actually see him for years – she raises herself up past her failure teammate, her and Akatsuchi, they both pass their Jonin exams. But Deidara hangs over them, hangs onto them, pressed to their spines, curled up comfortable and awful. It's a pressure, that failure. They couldn't even stop their teammate from defecting.  
The latch on her window clicks open and Kurotsuchi jolts upright in bed, her hand flying to grip the kunai she keeps close by, but the moonlight illuminates blond hair and makes it white and her voice catches in her throat, a stutter of words that don't quite make it out.  
(She is sixteen again and there he is, kissing her, a brush of lips like bird's wings over hers and her hands hand fisted tight into his shirt, into his jacket, and she'd held on and hoped it had been enough to ground him. But it hadn't been – she hadn't been enough.)  
His arms drip blood onto the windowsill, fat droplets that will stain and she stares at him – sweat beads his forehead, mats his hair, and his face is smudged with dirt and dust and she registers then that he has no arms, _he has no arms._ Kurotsuchi moves on instinct, guides him into her bedroom and sits him on the floor. His Akatsuki cloak is tattered, torn in some spots, and his arms (stumps?) ooze blood and pus and her stomach lurches in a way that suggests she may puke.  
"Oh...Deidara."  
His name makes his eyes snap to her and he looks at her like he's seeing her for the first time, like he's never looked at her before and she wonders when the last time he really saw her was – when he looked at her up close and not from up in the sky, drifting on clouds a thousand miles away. He still smells like dirt, like earth after a good rain, fresh and familiar and comforting.  
(Distantly, Kurotsuchi remembers retreating to the mountains after he left, right after, sitting in the rain and letting the smell wash over her, take her back to missions as Chuunin, sitting by the campfire on warm summer nights, with her boys, her team, her friends)  
Kurotsuchi laughs.  
She laughs because she might cry and she shakes her head as she stands to get her first aid kit out of her drawer – she's no medical ninja, but she knows a little because Akatsuchi is clumsy and so is her father and for that matter, her grandfather. Deidara's eyes follow her across the room, puzzled.  
"Look at you," She teases as she kneels, her hands finding the clasps that hold his cloak shut, pulling at them and she wonders if he'd fight her, if he had his arms, "You're a goddamn mess."  
Deidara snorts and she smiles, a little.  
The whole thing is painfully familiar, the smells, the feel of him, his eyes on her hands as they work down his front, easing open buttons and then the melancholy sets in, heavy, it speaks volumes between them – loud, hard words that rattle in the empty spaces between them and it's funny, but for the first time in years, there is no ocean between them and she is not watching his back. She sees Deidara, just him, like she remembers. That seven year old, precocious genin friend that taught her how to throw shuriken and kunai is back, the one that laughed in her face and liked to ruffle her hair with dirty hands. The one who took her hand and told her that once they were a team, he'd watch her.  
"What would the Tsuchikage say if he could see this."  
Her hands falter on the last button and she lifts her eyes to meet his. For a long time, they just look at her, his arm leaking blood onto her carpet (she can hear the steady drip, it echoes in her mind, and it condemns her), and she supposes she must look off, or uncomfortable with the question, because he shakes his head eventually before he tips it back to look at the ceiling.  
"Guess it's good that some things don't change."  
She wants to muster the energy to be mad – disgruntled, or even annoyed, but she finds she's too tired and she just sighs as her hands warm with chakra.  
"Just be quiet, Deidara."

When she wakes up, he's gone.  
She spends the day scrubbing the carpet, and is thankful when her Father doesn't ask her about it.

Kurotsuchi keeps advancing as a ninja.  
She trains her own genin team but they lose in the Chuunin exams – two die and her final genin, a skinny little brunette with big eyes drops out from being a ninja two days after. She isn't too disappointed, surprisingly, and she decides she's not much of a fan of teaching and doesn't take another team on.

"Are you all right?"  
Akatsuchi's voice startles her out of her thoughts and she gives him a weak smile and nods. She doesn't know what's wrong – there is an unease winding into her guts, a discomfort like an itch she can't reach. She knows something is wrong, the energy in the air is different, and there is a buzz of something she can't explain or name. She wishes she could, and she shrugs helplessly.  
Akatsuchi gives her a smile, "I know. I feel it too."  
She knows he does – they have been like this for a while, there is an understanding and it is easy and casual and familiar. Like an old sweater, Akatsuchi knows her, knows her intricacies and flaws and the hairline fractures in her design. Like Deidara used to.  
(The fact that he comes to mind makes her angry – she shouldn't think of him, shouldn't remember him in her room that night months ago, weak and broken and beaten, the way he'd let her heal the wounds, his arms gone, ripped off or blown away, she doesn't know but she hates that he's there still.)  
"Do you remember," Akatsuchi begins, suddenly, "That summer, right after we became Chuunin? You, me and Deidara...we went on that trip to the mountains and we found that cave? With the lake in the back?"  
Her eyes dart to him – she hasn't heard him say that name in a long time, and it's disconcerting how easily he says it, it rolls off his tongue, washes over her, slides over her skin like an old quilt, wraps her up in its warmth. It's been a long time since she's heard that name without any malice or distaste.  
"Yeah..."  
"We should go back," Akatsuchi suggests, and his smile is pleased, and she wonders how he bears it, the weight of him, always there, "You shoved him in the lake, you remember? Oh, I thought Deidara was going to kill you."  
She does remember – the way his head had burst up from beneath the dark water, eyes bright and angry, but not really, and he'd been theirs again, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.  
Kurotsuchi is going to laugh, nod, tell him she remembers it like yesterday and ask him, do you miss Deidara? Do you wish he'd come back? But the door to her room bangs open and her father is there and the look in his eyes causes her good mood to sink like a stone to hit low in her guts.  
"Dad?"  
"Kurotsuchi...Akatsuchi," He hesitates, "It's...its Deidara. He's dead."

Kurotsuchi meets Sakura Haruno just after the Kage Summit.  
The leaf girl is sitting outside a medical tent, and it is the early hours of dawn. She's holding her headband in her palms, cradling it, staring down at the symbol and Kurotsuchi almost doesn't say anything, almost tries to slip away but she lifts her eyes and finds her, pins her with them.  
"Hi," She offers.  
Kurotsuchi smiles in greeting and approaches, notices the sad gleam in her green eyes, in the twist of her lips, thin and drawn tight. She looks tired and she eases down next to her on the ground.  
"You all right?"  
Sakura sighs, this soft, breathy sound and she is delicate in a way that Kurotsuchi isn't, still soft and decidedly feminine, pretty, with her bubblegum hair and wide, green eyes. Kurotsuchi keeps her hair short, cropped, and she is more of a boy than a lady and she wonders if her grandfather is to thank for that, or if it's Akatsuchi.  
"Do you..." Sakura trails off, and sighs, her hands tighten around the headband and she sees her knuckles turn white, "Do you ever wonder how things can...get so far off course? Go so wrong? How you can...let it happen and not notice?"  
Kurotsuchi doesn't know what she's talking about, or who, but something stabs at her beneath her ribcage, hot and painful, like a knife and she shrugs, "I guess."  
"Do you know Sasuke Uchiha?"  
The name lights recognition in the back of her mind. Kurotsuchi nods, a little, because she does remember him – he burst into the Kage Summit, caused a ruckus and that's when she clues in. Of course – this girl, she's his teammate, she's that Sakura Haruno. It makes sense, and she's suddenly decidedly uncomfortable. But Sakura looks at her with a sadness that is endearing, disarming.  
"Yeah."  
"Then you can..." She hesitates again, and shakes her head, "I'm sorry. I'm...I'm not making any sense."  
"No," Kurotsuchi cuts in, "No. I get it. Believe me."  
Deidara instantly comes to her mind, stupid, foolish, distant Deidara – dead now, blown to pieces. Ironically, trying to kill the very same Sasuke Uchiha this girl is mourning. Their dead loved ones, still alive, but gone to them forever. There is nothing she can do to save him and Kurotsuchi wonders if she is just coming to this realization now.  
Sakura looks at her and gives her a smile, "Do you mind if I ask who?"  
Kurotsuchi tenses, for a moment, and then exhales in a puff of air, shaking her head, "It's not important. He's dead now."  
Dead, dead, Deidara is dead – she remembers the bitter taste of the words in her mouth, how she'd sat where he sat that night, bleeding on her carpet, and she'd cried, she'd screamed for him, that bastard, that stupid fucking bastard, he'd said he'd protect her, he said he'd watch her, how could he leave like this? He was always walking away and now he'd gone so far she'd never find him and maybe that's what he'd wanted all along.  
Sakura nods and they sit in silence for a long time, just the two of them, watching the sky bleed from black to pink and then clear blue and Kurotsuchi looks up at it and thinks of Deidara even though she doesn't want to. Eventually, Akatsuchi comes from their tent and tells her it's time to go, and she gives Sakura a weak, reassuring smile, pausing before she goes.  
"Sometimes, there's nothing you can do," She says, and Kurotsuchi wishes she could believe her own words, wishes she could listen to herself because she can't take her own advice; "Don't worry."  
Kurotsuchi decides, then, that she will never be like this Sakura girl, so crippled by a betrayal that it still haunts her every step, dictates her every breath and move. She will not let him have that control over her.  
Not anymore.

Kurotsuchi has always considered herself to be a practical person.  
She is a ninja; she is not ruled by emotions but this...she can't do this. She can't take this, can't take seeing him, standing there, his eyes that telltale colour of the reanimation jutsu. He is gone, he should remain gone, out of her life like he decided - why does he always do this, her mind screams, why does he always come back when he shouldn't be there?  
Her grandfather is speaking, but his voice is white noise she can't hear over the roar of blood in her ears. Deidara is smirking at them, lazily, amused, and she realizes then, with a sick stab of pain to her gut that he actually is gone still, he has been gone for years and he will never come back to them.  
The Deidara she knew, the one that kissed her softly beneath the moonlight, the one that glared up at her from the lake in that cave hidden in the mountains, the one that stood in front of two Mist ninja during their Chuunin exam without an ounce of fear, his back rigid and ramrod straight, kunai drawn (_don't be scared, mmn. I'm right here-_) – that man, boy, person, _friend_, is dead and Kurotsuchi chokes down her anger, swallows it down and tries to see nothing but a dead man.  
Akatsuchi is looking helplessly to her, his gaze steady but hurting and she wonders if she looks that lost, that broken – her grandfather barks something at her and the smirk fades from Deidara's mouth. His lips draw into that familiar tight line she saw before he ran away, before he abandoned them and Kurotsuchi slides into a fighting stance. They are not children. This is not a game, this is war, this is a war and they are on opposing sides, him standing against her.  
He will not do this to her.  
Not anymore.

_And you caused it,  
And you caused it  
Well I've lost it all, I'm just a silhouette,  
A lifeless face that you'll soon forget,  
My eyes are damp from the words you left,  
Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest._


End file.
